Two years for an 11 min. short film. In that time I have:
Re-Roofed my house by myself (mostly), leveled my back yard, built a shed, scraped and painted (some of) my house, dealt with a car accident and replacing my wife's car, re-financed my house, driven to L.A. and back, and kept my job and family intact with all of the extra curricular activity that entails.

Well, that will be why, looks like someone needs to focus their priorities

Two years for an 11 min. short film. In that time I have:
Re-Roofed my house by myself (mostly), leveled my back yard, built a shed, scraped and painted (some of) my house, dealt with a car accident and replacing my wife's car, re-financed my house, driven to L.A. and back, and kept my job and family intact with all of the extra curricular activity that entails.

Well, that will be why, looks like someone needs to focus their priorities

Pretty sure I have at least one of every shot...Under exposed, over exposed, soft, poorly framed, ect. with some really nice shots thrown in for aesthetics.

I've rearranged the timeline numerous times to see what works best to move the story along and think I have it worked out the best I can. Still tightening it up here and there as I go. I find myself needing to walk away from it and return later with fresh eyes or I'll end up messing with a sequence until it no longer works and need to reverse what I've done. Counter productive. Working in the audio as I get a sequence where I want it so I don't have to move any more clips than I need to while I'm still shuffling and refining.

I have my final location for my final shots, and the smoke has cleared out for now, just need a minute and a copilot to land this thing. If I could get two of the shots solo I'd have them already.

My main HDD crashed and burned, fully. I still have all of the footage and audio, I backed them up on multiple drives, and I was smart enough to backup my Premiere project files on a nearly weekly basis so I only lost about two days of editing. That is unless I can recover the last project file from the dead HDD. It's not looking good for any recovery though, my comp shows the drive in post but not in disk management so I guess it depends on if the recovery software can see the drive or not.

My only real setback, aside from losing a crap-ton of other stuff that I didn't bother to backup, is Adobe not letting me regain legal ownership of my software...I seem to have lost rights to my ownership of my cs6 master collection, pretty sure someone pirated out my serial or some such, so Adobe is rejecting it. I hate the idea of not having physical media but I may just have to go subscription. I'm going to argue with Adobe for a bit before I cave though. Sucks.

I have all of the shots I need to put out a completed short film. I'm still picking up the pieces from my hard drive failure like re-downloading and installing all of my fonts that I used in my title sequences so I can put those back together, but my programs are back up and running. I did lose a bit of editing but who cares?! I have it all shot now!! On to post!

Heh, editing out the last bit and I notice a fatal continuity error. No headphones after putting in headphones in a prior scene, critical to the story. Fuck. Re-shoot planned for Monday, weather permitting.

Otherwise, editing is all caught back up to where it was, titles are fixed, and I'm working on audio and Minor VFX.

I'm happy with what I was able to do for a first attempt at film making even if It took way longer than necessary to do. My next attempt will be better because of what I've learned on this one. I really need to slow down when I get behind the camera and pay attention to getting everything in-camera set up right the first time. I tend to gloss over white balance and aperture settings from camera position to camera position and don't realize it until I move to a new position, but I'm getting better. I think the experience of actually filming a script will help me to better write a script that can be filmed as well.

Once again, all of the footage is in place.
I still made a rookie mistake, but it's just a barely noticeable wardrobe thing so we're going to pretend I didn't and call it good.

Audio is more of a pain in the ass than I'd like it to be, time consuming mostly, but that's also due to my lack of knowledge in that arena. Still fiddling away.

VFX pending.

Last, and almost surely least, I thought of something that will potentially better carry the story through certain transitions, but it means grabbing one more shot that can be edited into a few separate little clips. Easy enough, doesn't rely on any one else to accomplish, and doesn't stop me from editing the rest of this as is. Quick to setup, shoot, and edit into place for just a little added flow to the story.

Hoping to have it done by Halloween but I can't promise at this point. I'll do my best.

If you can make it through ANY film without some sort of error, it's an achievement in itself, so I wouldn't worry about it - 95% of your audience won't notice anyway.

Audio is still - and always will be - one of the largest obstacles no one will ever warn you about. Best of luck!

I'm just going to treat it like a game and see who mentions it.

And audio on a zero budget is tough when your story relies on music as a story element. I have found some good creative commons license (free) stuff but it has taken quite an effort sifting through complete garbage to find what's usable. Mostly done but clearly not going to have it ready before Halloween (tomorrow).

Still have some VFX to tackle once I've hammered out the audio which shouldn't take too long. Just little stuff like putting a screen on a non-functioning ipod and removing/re-branding some trademarked social media logos. I might even attempt to change a background from a fence and house to forest; if I feel ambitious.

I'm hunting for one more song that fits the film. The rest of the audio just needs some fine tuning here and there to tighten it up.

I have to reign myself in every time I go to edit, I've rearranged chunks of the timeline nearly every time I go in. I think each rework was an improvement but I can't seem to let myself just watch it start to finish without stopping and messing with something. I spent a day laying in way too many audio layers in a section just to rip it all out and start over. Man that got out of hand. I kept trying to stop a train wreck by piling more shit on the tracks.

The VFX should go smoother, at least I kind of know what I'm doing there.